


Splinters

by paradiamond



Category: The Rook (TV 2019)
Genre: 1.03 AU, Big Reveal, Gen, Myfanwy POV, Myfanwy panic, Nature! it’s great, Other, happens, pre-Mystalt, the fantastic superorganism that is trees, you know how you sometimes have a panic attack and just wander into the woods?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 10:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20329702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradiamond/pseuds/paradiamond
Summary: Myfanwy freaks out upon her arrival at Glengrove and tries to go where she can’t be seen, the constant surveillance and residual trauma of waking up a blank finally getting to her. She finds peace in the woods, among the trees and everything underneath them. Eventually, Gestalt comes looking.





	Splinters

**Author's Note:**

> Myfanwy: due to personal reasons I’ll be leaving everything behind and becoming part of the forest  
Gestalt, in haunting unison: Absolutely not.

When she picked up the petrified glass, Myfanwy’s heart stuttered in her chest and didn’t start up again until she started walking, her mind a complete blank. Like her. Like she was. Is. She kept walking. 

The ruins of Glengrove house stood behind her, empty and useless but somehow still sinister. Nothing was familiar but the signs all pointed to something extremely bad happening here and originating with herself, just like everything else in this life she didn’t know. When she clenched her fists, her fingers slipped on the sweat of her palms. She was shaking so badly she nearly tripped walking back to the car. She dropped the glass, leaving it behind. 

There was no way she could drive, since she couldn’t even get the door open. Winded, she rested her arms on the roof of the car and leaned over then, breathing as evenly as she could. The only positive was catching a break from the unrelenting surveillance. Terrible as she felt out here, she was alone, and it was the best she’d felt in the two days she’d been alive. But it wasn’t real. They were always watching. She couldn’t take it anymore. 

Without thinking too hard on what she was doing, Myfanwy straightened up and opened the door and dropped her very traceable phone onto the front seat. Closed it. Hoped she didn’t have some kind of tracking implant in the back of her neck like a dog. Walked away without planning where she was going. 

The breeze felt good on her face. Maybe Myfanwy Thomas was supposed to die and her continued existence was some kind of joke. Didn’t matter out here. The ground was solid under her feet as she walked across the wide field and into the shade of the trees. 

Myfanwy picked her way through the leaves and underbrush in her fancy office shoes, avoiding stumps and fallen logs. She wasn’t going anywhere, really. There was nowhere to go except back. She didn’t turn to look behind her. This was just a break. She just needed some time to herself. 

The smell of blood followed her. It was a testament to have scattered her mind was that she didn’t notice that it was coming from her for what felt like a long time, but she saw it when she looked down. Little red half moons. She’d picked her cuticles bloody. Raw. 

She flexed her hands, feeling the sting. She’d just assumed she was imagining it. Probably not a great sign. Couldn’t go back now though, obviously, not until she got herself together. It was like Myfanwy didn’t exist anywhere else, not in the past, not in the office, not anywhere but right here, looking up and trying to see if she innately knew the differences between the different types of trees like she knew the Prime Minister and the days of the week. She didn’t, and it didn’t matter at all to their beauty. 

She kept walking until she didn’t feel like walking anymore. She stood still until she wanted to sit down. She sat on a rock until she wanted to do something else, make herself even less exposed under the trees. 

Trees. 

She looked up, into the leaves and branches and trunks that all blended together. 

Myfanwy climbed a tree. 

***

Up above, the sun was shining, slowing moving across the sky. It was peaceful. At one point, a bird landed on the branch next to her, apparently unconcerned by her presence, and she reached out without thinking, trying to touch it, her mind reaching out just the same, trying to connect like she’d connected with the people back in London. She missed, obviously, birds were a lot faster than she was, especially now, like this, moving at the speed of the sun, and her hand landed on the bark instead. And made a connection. Two links in a chain slotting together in her mind. Myfanwy gasped, feeling the complexity of the tree and its brothers. The only thing she’d felt even close to this was when she touched Gestalt’s hand on the bridge that first day, and it startled her so badly that she’d jerked away before she got caught in the depths of them. And that was just one person with four bodies. 

Maybe this shouldn’t have been all that shocking. It was a living thing. She was touching it with her skin. But it hadn’t been in any of the videos or notes. Actually, there’d been very little about her ability, since she’d shied away from it all these years. Maybe this was what it was really for. People were too physical, too fragile. She could disrupt their systems so easily, without meaning to, even. Not this one. It was too vast, too powerful. It carried her away. 

As the leaves swayed above, Myfanwy drifted below, caught in the current. It was nice. 

***

“Hey there.” 

Myfanwy blinked, then looked down. Teddy was standing at the base of her tree, looking up at her with their hands stuffed into their pockets. Unhappy. Stressed. Angry? 

She considered moving, it was certainly a thought, but her entire body was stiff. Even her face was frozen, which she learned when she tried to smile back. But she had sound. “Hi.” 

Their eyebrows shot up. “Hi. What the fuck are you doing?” 

Myfanwy leaned back against the trunk, her legs still dangling over the open air, and considered the question. “I was...doing some investigating and thought I might take a break.” 

“Up a tree.” 

“Yes,” she said. These were easy questions to answer. Nothing like what she’d been dealing with up to this point. Being up in the tree had both made her much calmer and farther away from herself, like she was watching them both from above instead of just Teddy, who was shifting around in agitation, rustling the leaves that covered the forest floor. 

“Without your phone.” 

“Yes.” 

“What if you fell?” 

Interesting. “I guess I’d get hurt.” 

“Myfanwy-” Teddy cut themself off, turning around to face the way they’d both come with their hands on their hips. She watched with interest as they turned back around, expression blank. “Can you get down?” 

She looked at the branches below her. She didn’t exactly remember doing it, but she’d gotten up here well enough, so it stood to reason that she’d be able to get back down. “I think so.” 

“Uh huh.” Teddy leaned back, looking up and down the tree, like they were thinking about climbing it. 

Myfanwy waved them away. “Don’t. You’re too heavy. You’ll break the branches and fall.” She didn’t want that to happen to either of them. Teddy or the tree. 

Teddy smirked. “Yeah?”

Behind them, Eliza turned up, materializing out of the gathering darkness. The sun was going down, Myfanwy noticed for the first time. The sun was going down and Eliza was climbing the tree. 

“Hey! Cut it out, you got shot. You’ll hurt yourself.”

She was pretty sure she saw Eliza roll their eyes. “I’m fine.” 

She was, actually. Got herself settled on each branch before reaching for the next one, swinging up like a dancer to come to stand in the branch right below Myfanwy, holding onto the bark next to where she was sitting, drawing just level with her gaze. 

“Are you ok?”

Myfanwy ran her hands along the bark, feeling the last of the connection fading away. “I suppose.”

“Good.” Their expression took on something of a pained quality. “What do you think you’re doing? I didn’t know where you were.”

“Sorry.”

“Just don’t do this again, Myfanwy. You know where we work. You know how much danger you’re in.”

“Do I?”

Eliza shook their head. “What happened? This isn’t about the kiss.” 

The kiss was the one good thing about Myfanwy’s entire life so far. The one good human thing. Eliza, Robert, and the rest, all of Gestalt was the one point of brightness in the world right now. Since the beginning of time. 

She looked away. “No, it’s not.” 

Eliza waited, their lips pressed together so hard that Myfanwy could hardly see them. Could hardly see anything, out here. What was she doing? “I panicked. All the surveillance, all the tracking, all of it. It just got to me. I was coming back.” Maybe. Probably. Could she have connected with the trees permanently? If she’d stayed out here long enough? 

Eliza shook their head. “Why now?”

Myfanwy refocused on them, on their face, and remembered that she didn’t want to be a bird. “What?”

“Why is this getting to you now?” 

Myfanwy stared into their eyes, and saw the whole of them reflected back, everything she felt when she touched their skin. Without thinking, she let go of the tree and reached out to touch their face, feeling that braided complexity and warmth and solid stone. She was wrong, before. More fragile, yes, but so much more beautiful and complex than any plant, even one as fantastical as a tree. 

Eliza’s arm wrapped around her middle, as though making sure she didn’t fall. Even if she did, Myfanwy bet that Teddy was right there, ready to catch her. They deserved better than her. They deserved to know. 

“I have to tell you something.”

The knowing light in Eliza’s eyes was obvious even in the dimness, and she felt the jump of their interest in the pulse of their blood and adrenaline. There was never going to be secrets between them for long, the old Myfanwy should have seen that. Maybe she just assumed that new Myfanwy would run away. 

She let go of their face before she came clean. Told them everything, felt the way their arm tightened around her almost to the point of pain before releasing her entirely, pulled away as far as possible. When she was done, Eliza’s face was completely blank. They stewed in the heavy silence, the only sounds on the wind coming up from below. Teddy’s pacing. 

“When?” Eliza’s voice was low. 

“What?”

“When exactly did this happen?”

“Two days ago.” It was a testament to how shaken Gestalt was that they didn’t remember her saying it was the same time as the Bridge. They didn’t make mistakes. 

They shook their head, hair getting in their eyes. “You’ve been walking around with no memory for two days.”

“Yes.”

“Pretending to remember things.”

“Yes.”

Below, Teddy was moving in tight turns and sharp angles, never straying more than a few feet away from the base of the tree before correcting course. Myfanwy wondered where the others were. Probably dismantling bombs and running the whole show back at headquarters while the rest were here, dealing with Myfanwy’s budding insanity. 

Eliza took in a deep breath that echoed below. “Why are you telling me now?”

“You asked.”

The reproach and hurt in Eliza’s gaze was chilling. “I asked you before. I knew that something was wrong. I-”

“That was before we talked on the stairs and you said I could trust you. I believed you. I believe you now, even if you leave me up here. I’ll understand.” The lightness in her chest was surprising. She meant it. Even if they pushed her down and down, out of the tree to smash on the ground, she’d stand by her choice to tell them. There was just nothing else. No other point. She couldn’t hide in the woods forever. 

After a long moment in which time seemed to stretch between them, warping and curling over on itself, Eliza let out a long breath and turned on the branch they were standing on to lean back against the trunk, hands tucked in behind their back, perfectly balanced. Still, Myfanwy watched as carefully as possibly, ready to reach out and grab at them if they started to fall. They’d go together. 

“I can see why you came up here.” 

Myfanwy tilted her head. “Really? I don’t.” She knew why she stayed, but not why she came. 

“There’s nowhere else to go. It’s peaceful.” 

They had no idea how much. Myfanwy touched the bark, feeling the residual pulse of connection. She’d tell them about this, too, if they still wanted to hear it. “Yeah, it is.”

Eliza sighed. “Come on, let’s get you down.” 

All the shock and hurt seemed to have distilled down to a business-like mask, which Myfanwy understood all too well. Peaceful, and safe. Eliza gave her a hand, steadied her as she inched her way down, branch to branch, until she was close enough for Teddy to reach. She slipped easily from Eliza’s slim and capable hands to Teddy’s much bigger ones, catching her by the waist and lowering her feet back to solid ground. They didn’t let go. 

Myfanwy looked up into their eyes, again. All the time. It was always the same. Teddy was silent, but lowered their forehead to touch hers, sending off that spark of contact as Eliza landed on their feet behind her, as easily as a cat. 

“Ready?” 

“Sure,” Myfanwy said, keeping her voice low, too. 

Teddy didn’t let her go as much as slid their arm around her back and pulled her along, Eliza close on the other side. One of the nice things, Myfanwy mused, was that Teddy was accustomed to the limitations of short legs and kept the pace nice and calibrated for them. Just one of those things she probably knew before and lost. One drop in a million. One tree in a forest that used to be her life. 

The more they walked in the dark the more her numbness melted away. Without Gestalt, she would scream. The press of the dark was too strong, but it got better when they cleared the tree line. Under the open sky the moon had space to shine, not just slipping through the cracks anymore, and the exposure felt more welcoming than sinister. She looked, but it was too dark to see the ruins of the house, way out there and alone. 

“Myfanwy?” 

At the sound of Robert’s voice, Myfanwy jumped. “Oh.”

Robert was standing by the car. Their car, not hers, which was right next to it on the dirt road. On the other side, Alex was there too. The sight of all of them there, that Gestalt had devoted all four of their bodies to look for her, shocked her. “I-”

“Come on, let’s just get home,” Teddy said, his accent even thicker than usual, then passed her to Alex, for some reason, and got in the front seat of their car while the others typed away on phones and picked leaves off their clothes and shoes. Myfanwy watched all this happening without processing most of it, lost in her own tiny world, which had just gotten even more complicated. 

Alex bustled her into the back seat of her own car while Robert slid smoothly into the driver’s seat. Typical Gestalt. Always in control. But they surprised her when they slid in the back with her, keeping a hold on her hand. Alex on one side, Eliza on the other. 

“I’m glad you told me,” one of them said. Myfanwy was so dazed, and suddenly exhausted, that she didn’t catch who, but realized it didn’t matter. Her legs hurt. Her palms were scraped bloody from how she’d gripped at the bark. But she was ok. 

“Me too.” Her voice sounded rough, like she’d been screaming. Or crying, like she’d been trying not to do. Failed to keep from doing when Eliza took her hand, squeezing hard, and Alex slid her over, their arm wrapped around her shoulders, almost into their lap. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to turn her face so that Gestalt couldn’t see. They were everywhere, even all the way out here. Even if she hid, they found her. Even if she’d left, they would have followed. 

“Thank you.” 

Gestalt didn’t say anything. They were still mad, still processing, but she understood. Touching her skin, she felt all of them. They didn’t have to do or say anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t actually mean for this to turn out as horny for trees as it did but here we are I guess! What I learned here today is that no one can stop me, also I'm at paradiamond.tumblr.com


End file.
